


The Boy On Fire

by xooxu



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: AU, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-07
Updated: 2013-04-07
Packaged: 2017-12-07 18:10:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/751499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xooxu/pseuds/xooxu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"'Why haven’t you attempted to rescue Katniss, Annie, and Beetee?'</p>
<p>The room is dead quiet, but I can still hear my heart beating erratically, my blood starting to boil. </p>
<p>'You make that sound simple.'</p>
<p>'You want a Mockingjay. I want Katniss. I think we might be able to work something out.' I snarl at her. I’m burning." </p>
<p>After Peeta is rescued from the Quarter Quell, life, and the war, goes on. But maybe Finnick needs a little help learning that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boy On Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Major character death. 
> 
> I really like Peeta and Finnick, and I sort of wished they had more interaction in the books.

I'm boiling from the inside out. Almost literally, but I've come to understand that this is how my rage affects me. I burn. Portia said that the flames were all Cinna's idea, that the slogan had always been "the girl that was on fire," but I can't help but laugh in spite as the flames inside me fight to get out anyway they can.

They've had to sedate me four times since I woke up. I don't even remember the second time, just that I woke up with new scars on my knuckles and a horrendously bruised cheek. I remember the first night, however, with distinct clarity. I've got that scar to prove it, too.

The nightmares. They're more vivid than anything I can remember before them. I can't wake from them either, not when she dies. Somehow the dream keeps resetting itself, like instant rewind. At first, I just keep seeing the arrow fly through the air, then the crane descends on me, but I can still see Katniss's body, lying motionless, despite my screams. I see this countless times. Then things start to shift. The arrow doesn't make it to the invisible wall, and Katniss dies instantly with a painful shout as the electricity crackles all around her. I don't kill Brutus, and he reaches her first. Things start making less and less sense from there. Beetee, in all of his bones and glasses, stabs Katniss in the heart with a knife. Katniss stabs herself with an arrow. The monkeys bite into her flesh repeatedly until all that is left is a hunk of bloody meat. The acid fog consumes her, and her screams disappearing are all that let me know. Hundreds of oversized trackerjackers pierce her skin, leaving behind a mutilated lump of welts. Mutts with shining green eyes and glowing blond fur tear her to bits, slowly.

That one replays a couple of times.

I can't escape these dreams. These nightmares. They're starting to suffocate me, how much I'm screaming her name, until I can't even breathe to scream again.

Suddenly I'm awake, screaming her name out so loud, my voice feels like someone rubbed sandpaper over it a thousand times. But I don't stop, I can't stop, not until I find her. The Capitol can't have her. They can't, she's mine.

It takes me a minute to stop screaming to notice that I'm bolted down to the bed, strapped at each wrist, across the chest and waist. Strangely my legs are free, so I begin to kick and scream and pull at everything. A needle is sticking in my arm, taped down tightly. I try to free it, but I can barely wiggle my head over towards the needle, before I see him.

Finnick.

His sea green eyes are just staring. He's strapped down, just like me, to the bed on my right, but his eye is bruised over, and his head is bandaged. I try to remember where he was, what happened, but nothing beyond the wire being cut is coming to me, other than Katniss screaming and dying.

"Finnick! Finnick! Where is she? Do you know? What happened to her?"

Finnick doesn't answer, doesn't do anything, and I find that his silence is forbearing, and I can't take this. All I know is that Katniss is dead, but she can't be dead, can't be, because I made a promise to no one that I would keep her alive.

I'm still alive. So Katniss has to be, too.

I know I'm tugging at all of my bindings, and my legs are kicking the sheets, tangling with them, when the door opens. I don't notice at first, not until Haymitch is throwing himself on my legs, pinning them down, and a person I don't recognize is checking the needle in my arm.

I'm still screaming, so I don't hear anything that Haymitch is saying through grit teeth. At first, I don't want to. Then I realize that this is Haymitch, not some capitol guard, and he might be telling me where she is, what happened to her. So I give up.

Haymitch's gravel voice is growling at me as soon as I shut my mouth. "—have to calm down! Peeta!" Then he realizes there's a silence, too. But not for long.

"Where is she, Haymitch?"

Haymitch doesn't say anything. Just stares at me, pinning my still legs, until he decides that I've calmed down and can let them go.

"Where is she?" I repeat.

"You were picked up by a—"

"Where?"

"—a District thirteen rebel hover—"

"Haymitch!"

"—craft that—"

"HAYMITCH!" I scream, louder than before, than I knew I could, and he stops again. I just stare at him, panting, until I can say again, "Where is Katniss?"

Haymitch looks briefly at the man standing on my right, now tampering with the IV drip.

I flip. The strap on my right arm breaks.

I scream for her, at Haymitch, at the Capitol that I know has her, when the world blacks out.

&break&

"We need your help."

It's the third time that I'm fully awake from the morphling. I sitting up, strapped tightly at the waist, in a hospital bed. I'm apparently somewhere in District 13, which was never dead, just forgotten. I don't care.

There's food in front of me. I've been staring at it for the past two hours as others around me have come and talked at my comatose form, but I still can't register what the substance actually is. The straps on my hands and chest were removed after I was awake for an hour without trying to do anything. That was when they brought me food, and when people who I know I know, but don't care to place, come to talk to me.

Unless they're telling me that Katniss is either dead, being rescued, or here, I don't listen. So I'm not listening.

But they keep talking.

"Peeta, you have a way with words," Plutarch Havensbee, the Head Gamekeeper that met me inside the hovercraft, who apparently was a traitor to the Capitol, is telling me. I don't understand. But he's not telling me anything about Katniss, so I don't care. "We need someone to rally the districts. We need someone to bring down the Capitol. We need you to be the Mockingjay."

I feel my eyes widen at the word. It's too close for comfort.

He goes on and on about districts and the Capitol, and hunger, and other things. But none of them contain Katniss, so I don't listen.

"We need you to do it," He says again. "For Katniss."

They have to sedate me again. I barely remember throwing the tray. I do remember Finnick standing there, though, with that piteous stare. Like he knows.

He can't. She was mine.

&break&

When I wake next, I'm strapped in again, but this time, I see Prim Everdeen's bright blue eyes staring down at me. Her hands are wrapped gently around my left, and she's sitting on a chair that she's pulled up as close to the bed as she can get.

She doesn't say anything for a while. Then she simply says hi.

"How long have I been …?" I trail, not sure exactly what I'm asking for.

"It's been four days since … since they brought you back."

I don't know what to say to Katniss's sister. We've talked, joked, several times since the tours, but I don't know her well at all. I know Katniss loves her dearly. I remember she's learning apothecary under her mother.

I want to ask her everything she knows about Katniss, but instead I opt for, "Why aren't we in District Twelve?"

Prim doesn't answer right away, but she doesn't look away, doesn't flinch either. "Peeta. We're in District Thirteen because …"

It hits me right in that pause. Why I'm not on Prim's kitchen table, being looked over by her mother, why instead I'm strapped to a bed that reminds me too much of the one I woke up on after the first Games with a new metal leg.

"There is no District Twelve," I finish for her. She nods affirmative. I don't say anything for a while. "Do you know anything?" I don't have to add the "about Katniss."

"She's still alive."

My eyes widen. She's still alive. The capitol has her, doing god knows what, torture, both physical and psychological, breaking her down, but she's still alive. I have to save her. I need to save her.

"That's all anyone knows here, I've been told."

"They'll keep her alive," Finnick says from the foot of my bed. He's in the same hospital gown that I'm wearing, sitting and tying a knot into a small thin stretch of rope. I hadn't seen him, and it's hard to make him out when I crane my neck to look at him, but I can make out the bronze of his hair, the seaweed green of his eyes. "She didn't know anything. But they'll try to use her. If she's smart, she'll keep herself alive."

I don't know much about Finnick besides his time in the arena in the 64th Hunger Games, and what I saw in the arena during the Quarter Quell. I know he kept me alive several times. I also know he flirted with Katniss, and that Katniss wanted to split from the alliance we had with him and the others. If only I had. Who knows. Katniss and I might both be alive, still playing the Games.

"Why did they take me?" I ask him.

"Because you can use words, Peeta."

It's two days before they let me leave the District 13 hospital, accompanied by guards, to go meet with Plutarch and the District 13 president, Alma Coin. Finnick comes with me, because I ask him to. He tells me that they've taken his Annie, who wasn't even part of the Quell or the rebellion, just to try to break him. He tells me it worked. I received a rope from him, identical to the one he keeps tying and untying. "It's a distraction. It helps keep you from breaking down further." He also showed me several knots that he keeps forming, ones that are easy to master but involved, that take my concentration for a few minutes.

The small white concrete room also holds Haymitch, and five other people who I can't place. I glare at Plutarch briefly, before I realize this won't help. He may have organized the games, but he's here now. Not with the Capitol. Not with Katniss.

It's Coin that speaks first. "Peeta Mellark, have you agreed to be the Mockingjay?" She's blunt, but it matched her square face, showing signs of stress, and her cool ice gray eyes.

"No." I try to match her bluntness, but I think I undershoot it.

"Then why are we here? You asked for this." And it's true. The white walls of the hospital were suffocating me almost as bad as the nightmares that have been plaguing me worse than I could ever imagine. I needed to get out of there.

But that wasn't the only reason I asked to talk to President Coin. "Why haven't you attempted to rescue Katniss, Annie, and Beetee?"

The room is dead quiet, but I can still hear my heart beating erratically, my blood starting to boil.

"You make that sound simple."

"You want a Mockingjay. I want Katniss. I think we might be able to work something out." I snarl at her. I'm burning.

"That's a tall order."

"I'll do whatever you want. Read you're idiotic speeches. Dress in whatever half-cooked thing your Capitol lackeys have baked up. I'll be your face. Whatever you need. I just need Katniss."

There's a silence before one of the faces that don't mean anything to me starts listing improbabilities, the amount of resources it would take to even attempt anything of that caliber, and how it might result in many deaths, and maybe the death of Ka—

I cut him off there, "Do we have a deal? I'll give you two days to come up with a plan to break out Katniss, Annie, and Beetee." Katniss has already been in there for six days. I can't help but think that the Quarter Quell was over in three.

Finnick's been silent the whole time. I can hear the slide of his rope on itself. I know he's having a tough time dealing with this. With Annie Cresta. He has nightmares, too. I've come to know they are bad when he isn't screaming. "I'm drowning with her. They've got us tangled up in nets, just dragging us both down," he told me. "I literally can't breathe."

"I'll wake you." It hits me that I once thought of him as the enemy, but only two days and a rope later, I'm waking him up by calling his name when I can't hear him breathing.

Coin is staring me down. I wonder if she thinks she can get me to back down at all just by sight. I hold fast. Katniss is not something I will compromise on, and I promised Annie to Finnick.

"Fine," Coin says eventually. "Beetee's invaluable to us anyway. The quicker we get him back, the better."

It deeply bothers me that she said nothing about either Katniss or Annie, but she has agreed.

They begin working through a plan immediately. It goes through several phases, each one weighed and rethought based on who it would certainly lose, who else they might have to grab while they're there, what wouldn't work. After two days, it is perfected and staffed. Only volunteers. I notice that Gale is among them. I haven't seen him since he was laying on Katniss's kitchen table, his back bloodied and mutilated. Prim had told me that it was Gale and his fast thinking that had saved what little of District 12 had been saved. She also tells me that my family didn't make it out of the fire.

I wanted to volunteer, but that was shot down immediately by everyone. "You'd be too distraught when you saw her. Besides, the rebels need you now," Haymitch informs me. He's on the list of the troops going, although I've been told he's only to provide tactical support from one of District 13's hovercrafts.

During the furious planning and replanning, I'm evaluated by a psychiatrist to see if I'm stable enough to begin filming for the rebel's Mockingjay. Plutarch had the idea that they would broadcast my first speech during the rescue mission, as a distraction. They're also ready for me to start airing. I've heard that District 8 is on the verge of winning its rebellion. I answer everything honestly, because I don't care whether or not I begin filming today or ever, I just want them to leave and return with Katniss. The psychiatrist doesn't tell me what he's concluded after he's done with a series of seemingly unrelated questions. He just lets me go.

I find Haymitch in the Command center, along with Gale and Gobbs, the man leading the mission.

I haven't had a moment alone with Haymitch since I first woke up in the hospital. They leave tomorrow night.

They all look at me when I walk in. I know I still look like a mess. My hair hasn't been brushed since I got here, and even though I've started wearing the same white shirts and gray pants as everyone else, my emaciated frame lets the cloth hang and drape in the saddest of ways. They only have four sizes, infant, child, adult, and large. Almost no one wears the large, except maybe Gale and Gobbs.

"We need to talk," I tell Haymitch. He already knew, but I think he's been avoiding this since I first started screaming at him for Katniss. He knows I hold him responsible.

Haymitch leaves with me without a word, taking the lead and finally stopping in a room that looks a mess with discarded clothes and several empty liquor bottle. It must be his quarters. "Go ahead," he says as soon as the door is closed behind me.

"How could you leave her there?" I bite at him.

Haymitch sighs, drops down onto his cot. His eyes scan the room for a bottle, but then he stops himself. "She made me promise."

"How could you! Haymitch, you know that—"

"She made a pretty convincing argument, for someone just playing the game."

That stops me. I know how I feel about her. How I love her. How I've loved her ever since she made the birds listen, back when we were only five. But it never occurred to me, not since that train ride back to District 12 after the 74th Hunger Games, that she might care for me, too. Not just feel guilty, or that she owes me, or that I deserve it after Haymitch abandoned me in the first game.

Katniss told me, on the beach in Quarter Quell, that there would be one person who my death would destroy, that she wouldn't be able to live without me, but then the cameras were rolling, and she was suppose to be pregnant, and while I let myself hope, I didn't believe a word.

I eye Haymitch, who lets me digest what we he just said. I know what he wants to ask. "Go ahead," I tell him.

"How could you let her run away with Johanna?"

I can't answer that. I wanted to go with her, knew that something was wrong at the time. But Katniss had promised me that everything would be okay. So I stayed. And then the wire was cut by Enobaria, and all hell broke loose.

Johanna, who was picked up by the same District 13 hovercraft as me, along with Finnick after she chased down Brutus and ended up unconscious, told me that she knocked Katniss out with the coil of wire so that she could dig out the tracking device, just like Finnick had done to me. He'd clocked me with the back of his trident, then neatly dug out the tracker. I woke up quickly, though, when I heard Katniss screaming for me and saw Brutus heading toward the sound.

"She said it would be okay. I made the wrong decision."

&break&

The day before the rescue is suppose to happen, Fulvia Cardew, Plutarch's assisstant who has come up with the whole set, comes to get me with her own prep staff. I'm to be recorded Fulvia is obsessing over me, telling me what a wonderful shoot today is going to bring, how fabulous I'm going to look, how dangerous and sullen. I'm ushered to a part of District 13 that I've never been to before, sat down in an uncomfortable chair, and attacked with products and creams. The team is more muted than my previous prep team, Delia, Tommav, and Julius. None of them don unnaturally colored skin, or bright hair, but as they fix my skin and scars and hair, making my into a handsome and dashing Mockingjay, I'm torn between rolling my eyes and screaming at them for their silly conversations. The food, the people, the lack of color, anything that makes them feel less than at home.

When they're done, I don't bother looking in the mirror, which puts the team off. I know it makes them feel under-appreciated, but their praise comes openly from an approving Fulvia. "You look so dangerous, Peeta. You should really see yourself!"

I don't. I just ask for outfit they want me to wear, and the speech they want me to give. I'm led to a clothing rack that only has four outfits on it, each black and with a heavy militaristic feel to it.

"Each one is influenced by a militia outfit from one of the districts. This one," she grabs a simple but effective looking black leather jacket and a thick material black pants from the rack, "is District 13's army uniform. We'll try that first. If this is the one we go with, we'll know how we're going to play this." I peel off the outer layers of the District 13 civilian wear right there, not bothering to go behind one of the curtains they have provided for me. I don't have to remove my underwear, and I'm sure everyone here has seen more just from watching the games. The uniform fits perfectly, and even though it has some padding to it to help with my too-thin look, it is surprisingly comfortable and flexible. I roll my arm for good measure.

Fulvia is smiling when I turn for her. "I think we have our winner, but just in case…"

She makes me try on the other three, none of which I can recognize from anywhere. I wasn't even aware the other districts had militia. Fulvia is true to her word, and makes me dress back into the District 13 uniform. "We're going to play you as down to earth. One of the guys. Just another soldier in the fight. Because everyone's lost someone, Peeta. We've all lost our Katniss."

At first, it enrages me to hear her even imply that Katniss is dead, it makes me boil and burn, but I try my hardest not to break down right now. They only have today to film me and edit the clip. I don't have time right now to blow up or break down. Katniss needs me.

Fulvia takes me to a set that luckily looks basic and less over the top than I was expecting. Just a basic chair like many of the others I've seen all over District 13, and a blank concrete background. "Our plan was always to use your words. Haymitch insisted that nothing else would help, only hinder," Fulvia tells me, motioning to the seat. "We've also got film of the fighting in District 8, and the ruins of District 12, that we'll play on top of your speech."

"Do I have a script?" I ask her.

"More like talking points. It'll be more of an interview. Obviously we're going to practice your answers, but you're too talented to let someone else pick your words."

For what seems like hours, Fulvia and I go over the questions she has planned to ask me. I'm sure that other people had their hands in picking the questions, wording them just right to slant the views whichever way the Rebellion and District 13 wants. I can even picture President Coin making notes for others to follow when righting them. Most of them ask about my experience with the Games, my reaction to losing Katniss. They aren't easy, for sure, even after I attempt to answer them multiple times, but Fulvia assures me that everything I've responded with is more than enough to distract a panicked and grieving Panem.

There are other people in the room, who go in and out, setting up cameras, equipment, and just watching. There's even what looks like a window in the wall facing me, but I can't see into it. I'm surprised when Finnick, still in his gown and tying his rope, walks in and just stands out of the way. Fulvia notices how distracted I am, and is about to ask Finnick to leave, but I stop her. "He's got just as much riding on this as I do."

Finally, after we've gone over every question and what to say and what not to say, the hour comes, and the chaos is out of control, the room bursting with manic energy as everyone gets into position. I have to ground myself by watching Finnick, the only one in the room not trying to direct someone or move something, or reangle the shoot. Apparently there's a complication with broadcasting within the capitol that no one saw coming, but everyone is doing everything they can to correct it. Finnick just stands there against the wall, as tucked away as he can be, tying and untying his rope. His eye barely leave mine until I suddenly realize that the room is quiet. Fulvia looks at me.

"Whenever you're ready," she tells me, holding her pad of questions.

"I'm ready," I say honestly.

She smiles. "That's good to know."

I know my opening line, the one that Fulvia told me to say after looking directly in the camera. It helps that I've been burning, smoldering this entire time, but like I planned to do the moment she told me about the tagline she thought up, I say something else. "People of Panem," I begin, like I was told. "We die, and we live. But we fight back. For those we all have lost."

The room is silent as I wait for Fulvia to either ask my first question, or give me instructions, ask me to say it right. But she just sits there with her mouth slightly open.

A voice crackles on over an intercom. "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the boy on fire," Haymitch says.

&break&

They leave during the night, trying to make it across the country by late afternoon. Neither Finnick nor I can sleep. Finnick had volunteered to go, too. But he's in worse shape than I am. He hasn't changed out of his hospital gown, no matter where he goes. And that rope hasn't left his hands. He sometimes mutters to himself, but he tries not to do that unless it's just me.

Johanna has been released from intensive care, so she joins our small party in the main part of the hospital. Her right eye is missing, covered by a sterile white patch. She also broke four ribs and suffered major internal bleeding from her fight with Brutus. She's the only one who can sleep, hooked into a morphling drip.

I ask Finnick about Annie. I know she went insane during the Games after she saw her district partner beheaded five years ago. Her name was drawn in the reaping for the Quarter Quell, I remember, but then Mags volunteered for her place.

Talking about her seams to calm Finnick down. Even his hands still. "I knew her only a little before the games." Finnick is talking about the 65th Hunger Games, the one that he won when he was only fourteen. "She was only twelve, and we both sort of knew each other on the docks and in school." He tells me about how after he won, he became even more popular.

I try to imagine what that was like. He obviously must have had several people show interest, even before the games, with his bright seaweed eyes and bronzy hair, attractive features, and the young fisherman's body that helped him win the games. I don't know when he earned his flirtatious attitude, if that was something he'd always had, or if he'd worked it up for the games under the advisement of Mags, in order to bring in sponsors. His natural charm surely brought him favor, even if he wasn't then trying to win over half of Panem.

"But after the disgusting freaks in the Capitol, the sponsors that obviously looked at me like I was a piece of meat, I didn't want anyone's interest. Annie didn't change, though. She still smiled at me on the docks, like I hadn't just killed twenty-three other kids, like I hadn't become famous across every district in Panem. Like I was still me. I knew that was what I needed."

Finnick tells me that he hadn't meant to fall in love with her at all. He had only wanted a friend who could act like he was still the same human being, even if he lived in the Victors' Village or could afford not to work on the docks everyday, like he did. He doesn't know when he fell in love, never has. "It just crept up on me. One day, I looked at her and just knew." But he had known for a while how beautiful she was, and how a conversation with her could change his whole week around. Then he tells me how, when he turned sixteen, and was expected to Mentor the tributes for the 67th Hunger Games, the Capitol wanted him. Wanted every bit of him. How he went through lovers like candy. "I had to," is all he says when I ask him why. Annie was hurt after that year, when he came back and found out that his playboy antics, the number of lover he went through, were aired back home. She accused him of everything that was true. That he was no better than the Capitol, for giving into his wants without discretion.

"Then I told her I loved her." Finnick had known for a year then, but he'd kept their friendship because she had only been thirteen when he realized, and he knew she was too young. But now that she was fourteen, already maturing, he knew she loved him back. "I was wrong."

The way Finnick says it, I know he's trying to be funny. He even laughs a little at his own joke. Apparently, Annie had just been starting to question what their relationship was when he went to mentor. Seeing him go through lover after lover during the Games, while children she knew were dying, made Annie think she hated Finnick, and that Finnick had no feeling for her other than friendship. She slapped Finnick when he told her he loved her. "Then I explained everything. How the people I slept with became sponsors, how their money all went to helping the tributes, even though neither of them made it to the final four. Then I explained how I felt about her, about how easy it was to talk with her, how beautiful she was, how I loved everything about her because she made me fell less disgusted with myself." They didn't speak for weeks after that. Annie avoided Finnick as much as possible, and Finnick let Annie have her space until she worked everything out in her head. About two months later, Annie shows up at Finnick's doorstep in Victors' Village.

"She told me she loved me. Just like that. And then she kissed me."

Finnick is quiet after that. For about ten minutes, there's no sound in the dark room other than Johanna's breathing. Then I hear the soft  _shishhh_ of Finnick's rope being knotted again and again.

&break&

I sleep less than an hour, spread out over the remaining five left before they come and tell me to get out of bed. Every time I fall asleep, I see Katniss. Tied up in a dirty cell, being tortured on a metal bed, being hanged, stabbed, ripped apart, shot, electrocuted, anything that I could imagine the Capitol doing. In the last nightmare I have, Katniss is on fire. She's wearing the wedding dress that Cinna made, the one that she wore in her interview before the Quarter Quell, but instead of burning up harmlessly into a smoldering Mockingjay, she just screams and burns.

The next day isn't much better. I stay in my bed in the hospital while other people come and go. Prim and Mrs. Everdeen, both come to see me; Mrs. Everdeen tries to make conversation, mostly with herself, but Prim just sits next to me, holding my hand. Even Finnick gets out of bed to come sit near me, still focus on his knots with a not-quite-there look in his eye, but at one point he puts the rope down and grabs my other hand. He only gives it one gentle squeeze, but I squeeze back, letting him know I understand, before he lets go and both his hands are working deftly on the knots.

When it gets close to time, Mrs. Everdeen turns on the television. A Captiol newsreel is playing that no one pays attention to, until the image cuts to that of a flaming mockingjay. It all feels wrong to see my face emerge from the flames. It was always Katniss's symbol.

Since I had already sat through the entire interview once, I had planned not to watch it again, but the face on the screen is fairly surprising. I hardly even recognize the healthy looking man on the screen, set jaw and eyes not only determined, but burning. Even I can almost buy into the new "boy on fire" slogan.

The man on screen says the slogan I first said yesterday. I said it dozens of times after that initial take, both how Fulvia originally wanted, and with my own twist added to it, but they ended up using the first take.

"Wow Peeta," Prim whispers to me under her breath, "you look so angry."

The 'propo,' as Fulvia and Pluchard were calling it, plays for about thirty seconds, before static breaks in, and a fuzzy image of a news anchor tries to break free from the image of Peeta, the Mockingjay talking about the first time he saw Katniss. It doesn't take long for the Capitol to regain control of the broadcast, though, and for minutes and minutes, the initial story continues like nothing ever happened. I almost start to wonder if the District 13's people had given up just like that before the screen flickers back to my face.

This back and forth continues for hours, but the short spurts of propo keep getting cut off quicker and quicker before cutting back to some mundane Capitol story. It doesn't take anyone in the room long to realize that the rebels are losing this fight on screen. I only pray that it's enough of a distraction to help the rescue mission.

Eventually, a story continues for forty minutes without so much of a flicker from the propo, and Mrs. Everdeen turns the screen off. She's quiet for the longest time before she just says, "Maybe that's all the time they needed."

Prim nods along, is even about to say something, but Johanna, who none of us knew was awake, cut her off. "They would have needed five hours at least."

&break&

Haymish returns in the middle of the night. Only Mrs. Everdeen and the morphling-riddled Johanna are sleeping.

I don't even have to look at him. Katniss would already be here in the hospital if she were coming back.

But Prim has to ask. Of course.

"They killed them all," is all Haymish says.

This time, it's Finnick that screams.

There's no point for me. The fire is burnt out.


End file.
